Nathan
“Please stop looking so glum, you two,” Professor Chicory tells us, tapping a stack of papers against her desk. “This happens all the time.”
Professor Chicory’s personal office has a recessed floor, so that she can stand at her full eight-foot height at one side of her desk, and Ruby and I can sit at the other, with our faces level with hers. She looks strangely less intimidating this close up.
Her centaur hooves clop against the distant tile floor as she shifts her weight.
“The WCLK curriculum is designed to help students learn from each other, as well as from the faculty,” Chicory goes on in her clipped, businesslike tone. “It works, most of the time. Some students gain a great deal of power from working in a crowd environment. They learn to absorb and redirect the energy flowing between many people at once. Others find it inspiring and informative to watch the different ways their classmates go about tackling a problem. But at the end of the day, you two are not teachers. You’re not being paid for your work. In fact, odds favor that you’re taking on substantial debt to be here and receive an education in social magic, and so help me, you will.”
Ruby’s hand is dangling between our seats, and I’m almost sure she wants me to take it and squeeze it in celebration of Chicory’s encouraging words. But almost isn’t enough for me to move my own hand.
“Not everyone performs well on the spot,” says Chicory. “It doesn’t mean you’re not a wizard. Some of the most beautiful and useful social magic happens in private, with careful planning. That’s why we have alternatives to the group exams. So, here’s what you get to do now. The two of you are going to come up with a piece of domination magic that you want to perform, using techniques we’ve covered so far this semester.”
She directs this to me, of course. I’m the one who failed my half of the group exam and put the two of us in this position as a team.
“It can be anything at all, as long as you’re both comfortable with it,” says Chicory. “But here’s the catch. Because you’re choosing your own spell and taking your own time with it, the standards for success are significantly higher than if you were responding to a randomized prompt in class.”
“Of course.” I nod vigorously, trying to sound both grateful for the second chance, and commanding enough to be able to make good on that second chance.
“You’ll need to show me a fairly impressive bit of domination magic,” Chicory continues. “Ethical, of course, as always, and accompanied by a five-page essay on the process and a brief video clip as proof of your success.”
“What about me?” Ruby asks. “Am I still doing my half of the regular exam in class this week?”
A line between Chicory’s eyebrow deepens.
“That’s up to you,” she says. “You and Nathan can develop and work on a second project, with you in the dominant position, or I can ask for volunteers to pair with you for in-class testing.”
“Oh,” says Ruby.
My heart hammers out an extra few beats when I realize that she sounds disappointed at the thought of switching partners.
“Can’t she still use me as her sub for her part?” I ask. “I don’t mind.”
Chicory gives me a hard look that lasts for several seconds. It feels like she’s waiting for me to correct myself on something, but I don’t know what.
“You got stage fright in class last week to such a degree that you had to call a stop to the session,” Chicory recounts. “You aren’t concerned about the same thing happening again?”
“Why would it?” I ask. “It’ll be Ruby’s test. Even if I freeze up, it doesn’t matter. All I have to do is sit there and take it, whatever it is.”
Chicory rests her elbows on her desk, and her face in her hands. She seems to be trying to rub a fit of sadness from her features before speaking.
“First of all, you need to stop thinking in terms of ‘Ruby’s test’ and ‘Nathan’s test.’” she says. “The submissive partner is not ballast. They are not a blank page for the dominant partner to write on. There are two of you here, for every part of this exercise. Both of you have a hand in the magic that passes between you. I hope to see you both honor that fact.”
#
I’ve got that cryptic advice still in my ears when Ruby and I check into the library and get ourselves settled in a study pod to brainstorm the possibilities.
This pod is nearly identical to the one we were assigned on Saturday, but it feels different, knowing that we’re actually going to be using it for study this time.
Our chastity belts are back in place today, keeping us horny and hyper-attuned to the flow of magical energy circulating between us – what a non-magic-user would call “chemistry.”
The chastity schedule of the WCLK curriculum might be more challenging than I was expecting when I selected the program for myself, but never since my first month on campus have I been so tempted to take my key back from the office and request some academic leave.
It wouldn’t do me any good if I did, though. I may be horny as hell right now, thinking about what Ruby and I did last time we were alone in a room together, but I know everything will change the moment those salacious thoughts become an actual possibility again. The security of my cage makes it easy to lust and fantasize, knowing that I won’t have to follow through any time soon. Once my dick is free and in my hand, it’ll stop cooperating, like always.
For now, I just try to enjoy the feeling, the potency of the magic pent up in my body, as frustrating as it is.
“I think we should start with your part— I mean, the part where you’re leading,” Ruby starts hesitantly, correcting herself as she goes. “Because we a hundred percent know that we need a project for that, and we need it soon.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “That… that would be sensible. Thanks.”
“So… any thoughts about what you want to do?” she asks.
I want out of this cage.
I want stronger magic, strong enough that I never have to worry about being able to pass a test again.
I want to forge a bond with Ruby so tight and strong that it’s guaranteed to last past graduation, right to the end of our lives.
All three of these are things that magic offers no shortcuts for.
I shrug and wish that I had a telepathic line open to Miranda right now. She’d have plenty of ideas.
Lacking that, I think harder on Professor Chicory’s advice. The submissive partner is not a blank sheet of paper.
“What do you want?” I ask Ruby.
She shrugs too. “Again, I’m sure she’ll give us a later deadline for mine, if we—”
“No, I don’t mean, ‘what do you want to do to me on your turn?’” I clarify. “I mean, ‘what do you want me to do to you?”
“Oh.” Ruby smiles down at her hands, twisting in her lap over the front plate of her belt. “We’re still talking about school work, right?”
I wish we weren’t.
“Yeah,” I say. “If you could wish for one thing, I mean, other than the obvious no-gos, what would it be?”
Ruby draws her shoulders up to her ears and thinks for a long while without looking at me. She opens her mouth at least five times without sound, then clamps her eyes shut, and says, “I wish I didn’t dread going back to the dorm every night.”
“Okay,” I say, practically salivating at the sign of a problem to be solved. “Why do you dread it?”
“My roommate, Oakley…” Ruby shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, I have to do something cool for you, and this is the only lead I’ve got, so… throw me a bone here?”
Ruby lets out a laugh in spite of herself, and shakes her head again.
“She’s just a bit of a prankster,” she says. “Struggles with boundaries, thinks everything’s a joke. I’ve tried talking to her about it, but….”
“That only made it worse,” I finish, when it’s clear Ruby’s not going to.
“Yeah.”
“Because she’s not a ‘prankster,’” I say. I’ve used that word too generously myself from time to time, to avoid using a more accurate one. “She’s a bully.”
Ruby clicks her tongue, like she’s trying to physically restrain it from speaking ill of anyone. Then she croaks, “Yeah.”
“She makes you never want to tell anyone how you feel, or what you want, or ever again, because you’ll only be teaching them how to hurt you more easily.”
Something has gone hard in my stomach, and I almost don’t say “she,” because I’m thinking of every bully I’ve ever known. Most of the ones in my life weren’t shes. But I manage to stay here, with Ruby, immersed in her case.
Ruby clears her throat and nods. “Yeah. But what can we do about that?”
That is the question, isn’t it?
“What if…?” I glance around the bare study pod for inspiration. “What if I could make you tougher for a little while? Give her a chance to break her fist on your face without you feeling a thing? Might make her think twice before she goes after you again.”
“Oh, no, she’d probably never even notice,” says Ruby. “She doesn’t hit me. Hints at it sometimes, but no. She just makes fun of me. Steals things. Breaks things. Sends gross messages to people from my phone. Switches off my alarm clock in the middle of the night to make me late for class. That sort of stuff.”
“Shit, okay…” I adjust to this sinister level of creativity. “Well, maybe I could, I don’t know, put a shield around you? A big one, that would protect your whole side of the room while you get some sleep? Or it could be more like an emotional shield, so that nothing she says can affect you for a while?”
“Yeah, I guess,” says Ruby. “An emotional shield. That could be nice.”
I wish she didn’t sound so polite about it. But it’s the best idea I’ve got.
Her hand is lying palm up on the couch between us.
I have an excuse this time, so I take it, and feel for the thread of magic connecting us.
#
Miranda
Drew is making so much noise that someone’s probably reported us for suspected cheating by now. I should have gagged him, but honestly, I wanted to get a reaction out of someone today, and I wanted to hear it at full volume.
Handholding Nate through his free play with Ruby on Saturday left me weirdly more fucked up than any other tease I’ve endured since starting at WCLK. Knowing what I was helping him do to her, for her, without being able to see or hear or feel anything myself… I didn’t even know what to do with myself when it was over. I had half a day left with no chastity belt, but I was too stuck in my head to go make any fun last-minute plans of my own.
Maybe it wasn’t even the weird vicarious nature of helping him fuck Ruby that was messing with me. Maybe I’d just spent too much time in the swirling, neurotic sinkhole that is Nate’s brain.
In the end, I spent the day alone with toys, racing the clock to work out every last bit of horniness I could before locking time. It was better than nothing, but I’m still so much antsier than I normally would be by this time of the week.
Today, I snapped and decided that I couldn’t wait another two weeks to blow off some steam in some kind of a hot and dirty manner.
Zeke is still mad at me for bailing on him, and Bernice is dealing with one of her mom’s meltdowns, so I had to put out feelers for anyone else in need of the same. Drew and I have done maybe one project together. I was lucky I even got his name right when I asked if I could come over.
Now I’ve got him bent over the edge of his dorm bed, with my thickest strap-on buried deep in his ass.
“Oh fuck,” he groans and sinks his teeth deep into his forearm. “Mmmm. Yeah. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh fuck, stop, stop.”
I stop and hold perfectly still.
“Oh fuck, you’re going to make me cum in my cage,” he moans, but doesn’t drag himself off of the dildo. In fact, he’s sliding his way a little bit deeper.
“Uh-uh, nope, not happening,” I say, placing my hand firmly on his ass, keeping him as still as I am. “I don’t cum, you don’t cum.”
“I know,” he moans.
“This is just play,” I tell him. “Just enjoying our senses for a little while.”
Yeah, I get the irony of the fact that wearing an unfeeling dildo over a chastity belt is one of the most sensory interactions I’ve had this month.
“I’m going to burst,” Drew moans, scraping his stubble along his arms.
“Just rest,” I tell him, giving his ass firm, reassuring squeezes. “Breathe.”
“Please,” he sighs. “Do something.”
“Okay.” I give his ass a slap. “Bad boy. Getting so close to wasting all that precious magical sensitivity.” I slap him again, imagining myself smacking that threatening orgasm away, kicking it farther down the road like an old tin can.
“Use it,” begs Drew. “Use my magic. Cast a spell.”
“Mmm, I could. What would you like me to do to you?” I ask, lightly tickling the pink marks I just left on him.
“I don’t care,” he moans. “Just anything. Turn me into something. Maybe something… something that doesn’t have a prostate?”
I don’t let myself think.
I just form my wish in my mind, and shove it down the string of magic connecting us.
Drew offers himself up easily, completely, lending so much magic to the effect that only a small seed of it needs to pass through me.
My vision takes shape in front of me.
Drew shrinks, along every axis. His muscles and the roughness of his body hair retreat, leaving smooth, freckled skin. The hair on his head lengthens and tinges reddish. He pushes himself up on his hands and looks down at them.
“Am I a girl?” he asks, in a higher than usual voice.
Not just any girl. He’s a perfect doppelganger for Ruby, but he’s facing away from the mirror, and doesn’t seem in any hurry to turn around. His focus is inward, on sensations too deep for a mirror to offer any insight into. He shoves himself experimentally deeper onto the dildo and gasps.
“How does it feel?” I ask.
“Weird,” he answers. “I’m still so horny, but it’s… rearranged.”
“Are you still worried you’re going to pop off just from me fucking your ass?” I ask, thrusting into the middle of Ruby’s high, heart-shaped pair of cheeks.
“No,” Drew moans, hammering himself back against me with a gasping, painful-sounding wail. “But fuck, I still want to!”
“Same,” I tell him, and grab his ass, his copy of her ass, to take control of the motion again for a few seconds.
He bites his newly narrow, freckled arm and takes what I give him so beautifully. When I push the dildo in all the way to the harness, he softly discovers the new upper ranges of his voice. I hold it there and push, and push, until I can almost feel my pussy brush the inside of my chastity belt’s front plate. I’m a millimeter away from being able to grind on the steel surface, but of course, I’ll never quite reach it. The fit and the magic make sure of that.
Drew is fondling his new breasts with wary awe.
“This is temporary, right?” he asks.
“Shh, of course,” I pat his ass. “I can’t make permanent changes alone, even if you wanted me to.”
Just to assure him — and maybe myself, a little, because him getting stuck like this and me having to explain it is something I don’t need — I pick a new form for him, again without making myself think about it.
He gets just a little taller, still skinny, still satisfyingly well-suited to being bent over the side of a bed.
Nate.
“Oh fuck, prostate,” Drew groans. “It exists. I gotta stop.”
He crawls up onto the bed to slide his way off of the dildo, and lies gasping and panting against his blanket.
Even though his presence on my strap-on doesn’t directly stimulate my body, I feel a deep, shuddering, tantalizing discomfort shoot through me with his absence. As if I actually had the possibility of an orgasm to lose.
I take off the strap-on and drop the spell completely, letting Drew’s body spread back out into its natural shape.
“Turn sideways,” I direct, and he does, making room for me to lie down and spoon him while we cool off.
“Oh boy. That was… I’m so glad you were into that,” Drew sighs.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I ask. “I’m the one who hit you up. And you’ve got a nice ass.”
He does, in his way, even if it isn’t one of the particular asses I’ve been annoyingly stuck on lately.
“Sure,” says Drew, running a self-satisfied hand up the muscular curve of that ass of his. “But I wasn’t sure, since… you know.”
“No, I don’t know,” I say, partly because he’s clearly dancing around something and needs a good kick in the pants to spit it out, but also because I really don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. If anyone around here basically has Up for Anything stamped on their forehead, it’s me.
“Nothing,” says Drew. “I just mean… you obviously didn’t like having a penis. So, I didn’t know if it’d be, like, triggering, or something, for you to use a fake one.”
I groan and put my arm over my face.
I only spent two weeks here before I got my transition procedures done in the school clinic, and they’re perfect. Absolutely perfect, far above and beyond what the most skilled nonmagical doctor could have done. And unlike what my own skills can produce, they are permanent.
Honestly, I think that’s part of what first attracted me to the study of magic, even before I was out to myself as trans, let alone to anyone else. Some part of me always knew the body I needed, and was always working to maneuver me into a place where I could get it.
No one at WCLK except for Nate even knew me during those first two weeks of classes, but now it’s like I can’t live down having once looked like some awkward, incompletely formed version of myself that no one even noticed at the time.
Drew can tell I’m uncomfortable.
“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to make a thing of it. I don’t care, I just thought you might.”
I sigh and put my arm down. I don’t have the power to take us back in time to before he brought it up, so I might as well just own it.
“Babe,” I climb over him to lie on the side where I can face him, “I’ve got what everyone who likes hetero-ish sex, even a little, wishes they had, and if they don’t wish it, they should. I’ve got the parts that fit me, and I’ve got the most intimate possible knowledge of how the other half lives.”
I reach out and grab Drew around the cage.
“I gave you the tiniest scrap of that gift today,” I tell him. “You got to feel what having a pussy is like, for about ten seconds. But I lived with a cock for almost nineteen years. So, when I tell you that I know how tight that cage is feeling,” I squeeze its bars, “when I talk about the soreness, the ache in your balls, the extra special frustration of needing to get hard and not even being able to do that, you know that I’m not guessing, or imagining, or repeating what I’ve been told. I’m a woman who knows exactly how a cock works. A woman you can’t fucking bullshit about it. Isn’t that just the best?”
Drew is straight-up quivering.
He kisses me, and clearly doesn’t want to stop. We’re heating up all over again, and I know there’s going to be another stab of disappointment when we inevitably have to cut this off, without any natural climax.
My phone buzzes in my bag, and as much as I want to throw it across the room, now is as good a time as any for an interruption.
Nathan: Hey, guess what? I need a hand with my project with Ruby.
I force a scowl, realize that Nate can’t see me, and then let myself smirk while I text back that I’m on my way.
#
“Wait, you want me to be mean to her?”
Ruby’s conveniently here for me to point at when I say this. She’s been sitting here in Nate’s room since I got here, listening to him painstakingly explain this plan about an emotional shield like it’s way more complicated than it actually is. This is not at all the kind of “help” I was expecting to provide.
I wait for Nate to do the math on what he’s asking of me, but Ruby jumps in first.
“If it helps any, I’m asking too,” she says earnestly. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized how useful it could be, if I could just get a bit of a boost whenever I’m going into a tough situation.”
“And if it doesn’t work, you’ll get your feelings hurt, and I’ll be the one who did it,” I point out.
“Please,” she laces her fingers together. “I promise not to take it personally.”
“You say that now,” I sigh.
“Her shielding comes from me,” Nate explains. “So, it probably wouldn’t stand up to me trying to tear through it.”
“And also, you don’t want to,” I say.
He doesn’t argue.
“If I’ve made her immune to other people’s words, we have a viable project,” he says. “And we can’t find that out without help from another person.”
I squeeze the back of my neck, grounding myself in my body as I look at Ruby, torn between wanting to give her whatever she wants, and not wanting to give her the exact specific thing she thinks she wants right now.
Fuck it, sometimes dom magic is about giving someone a safe chance to learn what they can and can’t handle.
“You don’t think there’s any way I could possibly say no, is there?” I ask, with dead seriousness, leveling my gaze right at Ruby. “No one can ever say no to you, not with all that cloying sweetness oozing all over the place. No one has ever been able to. No wonder you’re so unbearably spoiled.”
Ruby’s face becomes dangerously motionless.
“How do you feel?” Nate asks, patting her on the back.
“Oh, fine,” she answers, in a blank, tight voice. “I just didn’t realize it was starting yet. I’m fine. You did a great job with the shield, I…”
Then she sniffs, and we can all hear the moisture of unfallen tears.
“Oh, hey, it’s okay,” Nate puts his hands on her head. “Here, let me just shore it up a little.”
“No, no, no, stop, this is pointless,” I get in between them. “Even if it works, what then? You’re just going to show Professor Chicory a video of Ruby getting berated without crying, and hope that she believes you’re the reason? No. Where’s the ambition? Where’s the showmanship? You’ve been asked to demonstrate your ability to use the streams of energy that flow between sentient beings, and the best you could come up with was building an invisible wall to cut off those streams?”
“Well, just one of them, sometimes,” Ruby mumbles, looking even more downcast than she did when I was insulting her on purpose.
“Yeah, no, we can do better than this,” I say. “We’re not going to sit here all grim and dour, trying to tamp down the feelings this Oaky person gives you.”
“Oakley,” Ruby corrects.
“We’re going to take that energy, and make something fucking fun out of it!”
#
Ruby
Within a day, Miranda and Nathan have come up with an elaborate script for our project, or at least I think they have. They won’t let me see it, because the gist of it is that Nathan is going to possess me, and push instructions directly into my mind.
I suppose it would be a lot less impressive if I knew what those instructions were going to be in advance.
We meet up back at his dorm once again to get started.
I’m shaking a little when Miranda points her phone’s camera at me, and Nathan places his hands on my shoulders.
Why do I shake so easily?
“Do you trust me?” Nathan asks, and suddenly he’s that other version of himself, the one I met in the study pod that first time we were alone together, the one who can just ask stuff like that without umming and erring about it at all.
I nod.
I do trust him, as well as I can trust anyone I’ve spent fewer hours with than I can count on my fingers. And I don’t think it’s just a mental fallacy born of how cute he is. I see things in him that I recognize. I know he’s a person, a regular person with empathy and hangups, even if there are also parts of him I don’t understand yet.
I believe that, whatever Nathan has planned for me today, he means to help me.
Honestly, of the three of us, I’m the person I trust the least. If anyone could find a way to freeze up at the most inopportune moment, even through a possession spell, it’s me.
“Ready?” Nathan asks me.
I nod again.
He brings his lips right to my ear to whisper the spell into me.
“You’re mine,” he says, and a little shiver runs down my spine. “From now until this spell ends, your body, your voice, your mind, your time and efforts, your sensations and emotions, all belong to me. Do you agree?”
I nod. The shiver spreads outward, and I realize it’s not just from his words and breath on my ear. His magic is settling in, forming strings inside me for him to work me like a puppet.
“Put your hands on your hips,” he directs, and I can feel his words hitting not just my eardrums but the inside of my skull.
My hands move to my hips without my trying to move them.
“Now for the safety test,” Miranda cuts in. “Disobey the next command Nate gives you.”
Nathan pauses for a moment to think of a throwaway instruction, then says, “Stand on one foot.”
My foot starts to lift off the ground, but I remember to brace myself just in time and hold it to down. Strings of magic go taut inside me, tugging me toward compliance, offering to handle all the heavy lifting for me, if only I’ll relax and let them.
Resisting the tug of the strings is annoyingly effortful, but not painful or difficult. I could stand here with my feet on the ground all day if I felt like being stubborn, and the strings couldn’t force me to move. I’m sure with just a little extra yank, I could snap the strings right off and end the spell right here. I feel a silly urge to do exactly that, just to make the annoying tugging stop, but I ignore it.
“Okay, that’s enough,” says Miranda.
“Stand comfortably,” Nathan tells me, and I slip back into the serene, tingly feeling of being under his spell, with no conflict between me and the strings.
“As you can see,” Miranda speaks to our hypothetical viewers, “Ruby is able to reassert her own free will whenever and if-ever she wants to. Nathan’s control of her extends only so far as she welcomes it.”
The spell sounds so weak when she explains it like that, but it sure doesn’t feel weak.
I hope Professor Chicory gets what we’re going for.
“Set your phone to record, put it in your jogging holster, and pick up that box in the corner,” Nathan tells me, and the potency of the spell asserts itself again.
Sure, I still have a choice, the same choice I always have: do as I’m told, do something else, or do nothing at all.
But changing the default changes everything.
I choose to do nothing so often. I don’t speak when I’m not sure what to say. I don’t try things when I think I might fail. It’s so much easier to just shut down, keep to my own world, and let things be.
But now, for as long as this spell lasts, whatever Nathan tells me to do will be easier than letting things be. My hands set my phone to record and secure it in the jogging holster around my left bicep, without my having to spare the slightest thought for where the buttons are.
The camera points at the space more or less in front of me, ready to record my impending adventure in possession for Professor Chicory’s review.
“Walk back to your own dorm, and keep listening for my voice,” Nathan directs. “If anyone tries to talk to you, tell them…” Miranda gives him a look I can’t read, and his thoughtfulness turns puckish. “Tell them that you finally got a new teddy bear, and you don’t know why you ever stopped sleeping with one in the first place.”
My feet are already moving toward the door. It would normally take me forever to ask all my follow-up questions about this assignment, but now that I would have to work harder to stall, it isn’t happening.
Nathan gives me a wave as I exit his physical space, but then as if to assure me that he’s still with me, he speaks in my head.
You’ll be fine.
I walk quickly along the row of neatly cultivated trees in the middle of the main student housing complex, hoping to reach my own unit before anyone notices me, but Cam, a guy I have Healing class with, is walking home in the opposite direction and nods at me.
“Hey, Ruby.”
That counts, Nathan confirms in my head.
I could ignore them both and keep my mouth shut. But I do want to make Nathan’s spell look good, and all I have to do is not try.
“I finally got a new teddy bear,” I announce absurdly, holding the box up and shaking it in front of Cam. “I don’t know why I ever stopped sleeping with one.”
“Oh. Uh… Cool.” Cam smiles warmly, like I’ve just entrusted him with some special secret. “Well, I hope it gives you great rest.”
Say you’re going to name him Mr. Snuckerberry.
My face heats up and my stomach tightens as I listen to myself announce this while hugging the box where Mr. Snuckerberry allegedly resides.
Cam gives me an awkward thumbs-up. “Cute. You have a good one, Ruby.”
He continues on his way.
The heat and tightness inside me turn into an unexpected rush of excitement, enhancing the pleasant tingle of the spell.
I’m so embarrassed, but it’s not like I’m going to stop being friendly with Cam after this. It’s like Professor Chicory says when she’s trying to put things in perspective. I’m not dead. The world’s not ending, not even my world. Thanks to Nathan’s spell, I just did something that I would never normally be able to do, because the risk would seem too great, and nothing even remotely bad happened.
Continue inside, Nathan tells me. Check that you’re alone.
I walk up the stairs and unlock my unit, easily, without having to try. As I’d expect, I’m here a little earlier than Oakley.
Open the box, says Nathan.
I do, almost disappointed by how comfortable and therefore unexciting this action is.
What’s inside is not a teddy bear.
“Is this for me?” I ask, examining a clear plastic box with a simple black watch suspended inside. There are stickers with instructions right on the side of the package, explaining how to use multiple features, including a vibrating alarm.
It’d be pretty hard for Oakley to mess with this without waking me.
Maybe, says Nathan. If it gets through this in one piece. For now, Oakley just has to think it’s for you. Put it somewhere obvious.
My head spins with a million horrifically confrontational places this could be going.
But I perch the watch on one of the room’s weird little circular end tables anyway.
Now hide under the bed, he tells me, and I do.
I could get cornered under here. If Oakley finds me, and figures out what I was trying to do, and this is the day when she finally decides to make good on her threats of violence, I’ll have nowhere to run to.
But I’m already down here.
“Do I have to jump out at her if she takes it?” I ask Nathan in a whisper.
No, he answers.
“What, then?”
You’ll see.
I lay my head on my arm and try to get comfortable for the wait. The wooden floor is hard against my rib cage.
You have about ten minutes until she’s expected back, Nathan tells me, just as I’m considering fiddling with my phone to find out. How are you feeling?
“Terrified,” I whisper. “And… warm?”
Let’s take your mind off of it, he suggests.
“How?”
Want to stress test the spell a bit? See where the limits are?
“Okay,” I say. “But I’m not sure it’ll make me less scared.”
I’ll try to pick soothing things to try, he says. What’s your favorite food?
“Hmm. It’s hard to pick just one.”
Do it anyway, he tells me, and though I’m not at all sure it’s the perfect one for all occasions, my mind instantly zeroes in on a single candidate.
“Strawberries.”
Strawberries are good, says Nathan. Hold the first two fingers of your right hand in front of you, and believe that they taste like a perfect strawberry popsicle.
“Uh, okay…”
I stare at my fingers and think about how it feels to be this close to a sweet, melting, urgently beckoning treat.
Believe it, Nathan repeats, and the thought sharpens. I can almost smell the favorite popsicle I used to eat every day in summer. Are you believing it?
“Yes,” I answer.
…Go ahead, he says, after an agonizing pause. Take a lick.
I can’t believe how much I’m looking forward to touching the tip of my tongue to the side of my own index finger.
Translucently layered over the real texture of my skin, I make contact with the refreshing coolness of ice in summer, the stickiness of corn syrup, and the bright, fruity sweetness I’m hoping for.
I wrap my tongue as far around the sides of my finger as it can reach, searching for as much of the flavor as I can get as I drag my way up to the tip.
I’m about to start over from my first knuckle again, when my hand jerks away from me all by itself, and I remember that he just said a lick.
How does it taste? Nathan asks.
“Like strawberries,” I answer. “And summer. And… can I?”
Nathan laughs in my head. Have at it, it’s yours. Just don’t hurt yourself. And be ready to stop when I say so.
I’m already licking again, before he finishes speaking. I probe my tongue along the crease between my fingers, looking for channels of melting sweetness gathered there. I pull both fingers into my mouth and suck hard, imagining sugar and color draining out of ice crystals and leaving them plain, but there’s just as much sweetness left after that first suck as there was before it.
The flavor is inexhaustible, and it has that lightness and trailing finish that make me want more as soon as each swallow is finished.
I’m going to be very clear for the record, here, says Nathan. I’m not telling you to pretend that your fingers are a popsicle. I’m telling you experience them like one, genuinely. And now I’m telling you to tell me, honestly, whether you’ve been able to comply with that instruction.
“I have,” I say, with my fingers still halfway in my mouth. “I am. They taste just like one.”
Cool! he says, his tone of authority momentarily breaking into excitement. Seems like I have control over more of your mind than you’d normally have control over yourself. I wonder if I could order you not to feel pain, if you were hurt and waiting for help.
“Mmhmm,” I agree as well as I can with my mouth full. “Interesting.”
Or… would you like me to order you not to be afraid?
I think for a moment, with my own strawberry-flavored saliva running down my throat. That would be a useful application for a possession spell, and yet, somehow, losing my fear is so much scarier than keeping it. What if my fear is the only thing that can save me from some threat that no one else will see coming? Even more importantly, though….
“No,” I answer. “I think being scared is kinda part of the experience.”
I’m afraid getting rid of it would also get rid of the tingling excitement pulsing through these invisible puppet strings.
Well, if you change your mind… says Nathan.
I continue devouring the invisible, invincible popsicle that has replaced my fingers.
“I wish…” I start between licks, but then realize that what I want to ask him for is easier for me to do myself.
I pull my phone out of its holster and point the camera at myself.
You want me to watch you? he gets the hint out loud.
I smile and show him how deep I can take my fingers in my mouth (all the way to the crook of my thumb), and then pull back and give some special, loving attention to the very tips.
I could tell you to imagine it’s something else, Nathan tells me. I could make it taste just as realistic.
The thought had crossed my mind, and I’m on the verge of telling him to do it, when I hear footsteps in the hallway outside.
“Oh gods, she’s here!” I say.
Take your hand out of your mouth. It’s just a hand, Nathan instructs immediately.
The strawberry flavor disappears, along with the refreshing coolness and nostalgic stickiness. I feel strangely deprived when I have to take my fingers out of my mouth, like I’m wasting a rare and unfinished treat.
Put the phone back, be quiet, and pay attention.
I do it, instantly, effortlessly, right before the door opens.
Oakley’s distinctive footsteps enter, heavy yet precise. She pauses in just the right position to be looking at that circular end table where I left the watch, and her weight shifts.
“Ruby?” she calls out, and I almost call back, just because silence feels so rude, but Nathan’s directive to be quiet helps me quash that impulse.
Oakley pokes her head into the bathroom, and then returns to standing on that same spot on the floor, pointing in the same direction.
“Ruby?” she tries again, and I watch myself ignore her, hide from her, spy on her, with no small amount of amazement.
I’m really doing this.
Then there’s the sound of plastic brushing plastic, as she grabs the watch box, stuffs it into her backpack, and walks back out the door.
My stomach rises up with excitement, but at the same time, my throat tightens, and I’m speechless, even aside from Nathan’s instruction.
Sure, I know that my roommate is stealing from me. Things are here and then they’re gone, much too often for them to be getting lost in this tiny space, and she’s the only real suspect.
Still, it’s different to witness it actually happening. To hear her make the decision to take something away from me, instead of having to imagine it.
Follow her, but not too close, Nathan tells me.
Instead of taking my time to mourn my unjustified doubts about Oakley’s guilt, I roll out from under the bed, dust myself off, and walk into the hall.
“I don’t see her,” I say.
Turn left, says Nathan.
“How do you know?” I ask, already turning.
GPS tag on the watch, he answers. Don’t worry, I’ll take it off if you end up keeping it.
***
Thanks for reading! Don’t worry, there’s more to come following Nathan and Ruby’s possession project. If you’d like me to keep going with the Western College of Locks and Keys past that point, let me know in the comments and show me some love with your faves and follows!
